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| Ample time to deal with Iran, IAEA chief says |
| 2009-02-03 |
| Iran could gain the capability to make a nuclear weapon in 2-5 years but there is ample time to deal with the concern, the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said in a televised interview. Mohammad Al Baradei, director-general of the Vienna-based UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that after stockpiling enriched uranium, Iran would face further technical and political hurdles should it seek to build nuclear arms. "There is a concern, but don't hype the concern," Al Baradei, alluding mainly to US and Israeli warnings, said in a CNN interview broadcast late on Sunday. "There is ample time to engage [Iran] and reverse the concern and to move into more engagement rather than more isolation." Al Baradei said that for Iran to have weapons capacity, it would have to eject IAEA inspectors, leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), reconfigure production to refine uranium to the high degree needed for bomb fuel and fit the material into a warhead: "Even if I go by the CIA and other US intelligence, the estimations [are] that even if they go through all these scenarios, we're still talking about two to five years from now." Western powers believe Iran's declared programme to refine uranium to the low level required for civilian nuclear energy is a front for gaining the means to reprocess it into highly enriched material for bombs at short notice. Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 Mo's just doing his job - seeing to it that at least one Islamist-loving shit-hole middle eastern country ends up with nukes. Then, after they immediately use it to fry Tel Aviv, the West(TM) finally has the excuse we need to exterminate every last one of the goat-humpers. So call it a win, I guess. |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-02-03 16:24 |
| #2 "There is ample time to engage [Iran] and reverse the concern and to move into more engagement rather than more isolation." Hopefully Al Baradei will be in Tehran when Israel finally does "move into more engagement." Every director-general of the IAEA should witness at least one mushroom cloud. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2009-02-03 15:21 |
| #1 Ample time to deal with Iran, IAEA chief says Cause how long does it take "the west" to drop its pants and bend over? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-02-03 07:55 |